Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. The crisis of the new order. -- American democracy in a revolutionary age -- The Republican interest and the self-created democracy -- The making of Jeffersonian democracy -- Jefferson's two presidencies -- Nationalism and the War of 1812 -- II. Democracy ascendant. -- The era of bad feelings -- Slavery, compromise, and democratic politics -- The politics of moral improvement -- The aristocracy and democracy of America -- The Jackson era: uneasy beginnings -- Radical democracies -- 1832: Jackson's crucial year -- Banks, abolitionists, and the equal rights democracy -- "The republic has degenerated into a democracy" -- The politics of hard times -- Whigs, Democrats, and democracy -- III. Slavery and the crisis of American democracy. -- Whig debacle, Democratic confusion -- Antislavery, annexation, and the advent of young Hickory -- The bitter fruits of Manifest Destiny -- War, slavery, and the American 1848 -- Political truce, uneasy consequences -- The truce collapses -- A nightmare broods over society -- The faith that right makes might -- The Iliad of all our woes.

Political historian Wilentz traces an arc from the earliest days of the Republic to the opening shots of the Civil War, showing how the elitist young American republic became a rough-and-tumble democracy. He brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions. In these definitions Wilentz recovers the beginnings of a discontent--two starkly opposed democracies, one in the North and another in the South--and the wary balance that lasted until the election of Abraham Lincoln sparked its bloody resolution.--From publisher description.